Boy recovering after swallowing 12 nails that punctured his organs

Pic shows: Scans of Xiao Wen’s stomach Doctors have removed a dozen steel nails from a boy’s stomach after he swallowed them as food. The 10-year-old nicknamed Xiao Wen is thought to suffer from a disorder known as "pica", which is associated with eating non-nutritious substances such as hair, paper, stones, earth or metal. The "left-behind" child who lives in the county-level city of Lianyuan, in Central China’s Hunan Province, was taken to hospital for scans after his classmates saw him swallowing the 3.5-centimetre (1.38-inch) nails one day. His grandparents, who are his guardians while his parents work in other cities, were asked to transfer him to the Hunan Children’s Hospital in provincial capital Changsha after his condition was found to be more serious than first feared. Doctor Wen Jiabing said X-ray scans showed clearly the 12 nails inside Xiao Wen’s stomach, and that they could have ruptured the boy’s organs and caused serious internal bleeding if surgeons did not act quickly. Zhou Weiping, Xiao Wen’s dad, was called from his workplace in China’s southern Guangdong Province in order to grant approval for what was a successful round of invasive surgery to remove the sharp objects. Xiao Wen had apparently found the dangerous nails lying around on the school playground. The boy was also too afraid to admit that he swallowed the nails himself, at first blaming five bullies for forcing him to eat the indigestible items. But witness accounts from his class confirmed that he ate them himself, with his grandparents also saying that he had a tendency to eat paper – consistent with the pica disorder. Xiao Wen is now recovering from his surgery, and doctors have urged his grandparents to keep a closer eye on him and what he puts in his mouth. (ends) (Asia Wire Report)